Edie Middlestein loves fast-food sandwiches, potato chips with onion dip, and Chinese dumplings stuffed with spicy seafood. She likes devil’s-food cookies too, and once, late at night, while everyone at home was sleeping, ate two boxes of them to see what would happen. She didn’t feel a thing.

A figure of great stature, and sometimes the center of controversy in England, where he has served as chief rabbi and the public face of British Jewry for two decades, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is certain to add to both his stature and the controversy that surrounds him with the publication of his newest book.

At first glance, a children’s book about Crypto-Jews in the Southwest, which tells the story of descendants of Spanish Inquisition survivors who clandestinely pass along some Jewish traditions within the religious freedom of the United States, would seem to have little in common with the adult life of Theodore Ross, a Jewish New Yorker.

During his five-plus decades as a radio talk-show host, Barry Farber has reigned as a leader of his profession and interviewed, by his own count, some 10,000 guests — how many questions has he asked on-air? You do the math — and met some of the best-known figures of the second half of the 20th century and served in the U.S.